


The Limits of our Language

by Jaelijn



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Character Study, Developing Relationship, Ficlet, Gen, Introspection, Metaphors, Pre-Way Back, Season/Series 01, character backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21695602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: It was a language only he could understand...
Relationships: Kerr Avon & Vila Restal
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	The Limits of our Language

It was like a language, a language designed for no one but himself to understand. That wasn’t the case, of course. There were those that had designed the languages, that had developed and constructed the codes, that had implemented them into hardware. But when he could get lost in it, the computers spoke to him. In codes and numbers and pure, algorithmic logic they communicated, and not even those in his own profession seemed to be able to truly understand them. Only Avon, to whom the language of computers made more sense than that between humans, could. From his first moment of awe at the very first algorithm he ever saw and _understood_ , Avon had known that he would learn to speak this language – learn to master it, in fact, until it became a part of him, until it was second nature. Until he could make computers do anything, anything he set his mind to when his own species failed him. He understood the computers, understood exactly how to trust them – often, they were the only thing he knew how to really trust.

Avon never spoke of this to anyone, not anymore. He had tried, once, to make them understand, but they had thought him strange, arrogant, inhuman. Avon saw no reason to repeat an inherently flawed algorithm.

* * *

It was like a language, a language designed for no one but himself to understand. The locks spoke to him in high electronic whines and chimes, whispers and clicks – sounds that scarcely anyone else could even hear. Vila learned to first worship them, then he learned to speak with them. To tease, to cajole, to beg them to do his bidding, to give up their secrets and reveal to him the psychology of their creator. Under his hands and pricked ears, the locks sang to him. They were his truest companions. Often, they were his _only_ companions. Through prison and re-education, nothing could make Vila forget the language of locks. It wasn’t his mother’s tongue, or his father’s, but it was _his_.

Vila never spoke of this to anyone, not anymore. It made people report him, call him crazy, call him a fool. Only, one night on the _Liberator_ , when they were all gathered around the seats on the flight deck and he had had a little more to drink than he’d intended, the conversation had turned leisurely toward their passions. Jenna had spoken of flying, of freedom, and it had slipped out. They all knew of his skill, and the drink made him talk of his love, of the ways the locks spoke to him on a level he could never make anyone else understand, deeper than skin. Trailing off to silence, almost ashamed, Vila had looked across to the other end of the sofa, where Avon was seated a little apart from the rest of them, and had met disconcerted brown eyes that flickered away from him after just a moment.

And for the first time, in that moment, they had both found someone who _understood_. 


End file.
